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MacB · Oct 12, 2003, 09:38 PM

I am about to embark on the next great american movie.....How big of a firewire drive would i need. I was thinking a lacie 120 or 160....naturally if I could get by with 120, it is cost effective.....anyone have any opinions?

k_munic · Oct 13, 2003, 02:27 AM

Originally posted by MacB:
I am about to embark on the next great american movie.....How big of a firewire drive would i need. I was thinking a lacie 120 or 160....naturally if I could get by with 120, it is cost effective.....anyone have any opinions?

one hour of .dv stream need about 12Gig HD.

so, 120Gb fits 10 h raw material, for your final movie (90min) you have a edit-ratio of 1:7 which isn't much...

and:
no space for grafics AND all the 3D special effects

Jacke · Oct 13, 2003, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by k_munic:
one hour of .dv stream need about 12Gig HD.

so, 120Gb fits 10 h raw material, for your final movie (90min) you have a edit-ratio of 1:7 which isn't much...

and:
no space for grafics AND all the 3D special effects

I'm thinking a bit about getting in to amateur DV editing with iMovie and I wonder a bit what the edit-ratio should be? How much space would I reserve for a 5 or 10 minute movie?

Axo1ot1 · Oct 13, 2003, 03:13 PM

I've done 5-10 minute movies with a 6 gig HD. I am currently editing a 30 min. movie with a 200 GB FireWire 800 drive. It just depends on how you use your space. If you are serious about the movie, go a little over what you anticipate needing so you will have plenty of space if some unexpected rendering needs to happen etc.

k_munic · Oct 14, 2003, 02:08 AM

Originally posted by Jacke:
I'm thinking a bit about getting in to amateur DV editing with iMovie and I wonder a bit what the edit-ratio should be? How much space would I reserve for a 5 or 10 minute movie?

edit-ratio means, how much footage you will finally use in your finished project...- e.g. in a documentary you have "thousands" of minutes material, stuffed with nonsense. the final film is probably just e few minutes long...

another example: i put my camera om a tripod aside the playtrack, while playing soccer with my little son. i got 20 min of footage, the final "best of" is just 2minutes" (1:10)

and:
if you try to burn a dvd of your finished project, MacOsX needs LOTS of hidden (=in the finder not shown) space! for 60min dvd around 12 - 15 Gigs!

so, doing video is fun with a mac - if you have BIG hds... BIGGER! much more BIGGER

CIA · Oct 14, 2003, 09:53 AM

Not to scare you, but I have 580GB of disk space that is nearly 100% percent full of random incomplete film projects.

GhettoDalaiLama · Oct 15, 2003, 12:39 AM

Originally posted by CIA:
Not to scare you, but I have 580GB of disk space that is nearly 100% percent full of random incomplete film projects.

I have 650GB that IS full.

I'm out of space!

k_munic · Oct 15, 2003, 02:07 AM

@CIA, GhettoDalaiLama....

same here: just 5 projects - and yesterday i bought my 4th 120Gb hd!

found something interesting at ebay. you can buy "firewire tower/raids"! it's a case, fitting 4 hds, with 4 fw ports... so, the clutter on/under your table is maybe a little less.

one problem: this fw-tower is BEIGE

btw. i DO like these forum smileys!!

SSharon · Oct 17, 2003, 12:05 AM

I have a similar question but about internal HD's. I have a dual MDD with the stock 80 hard drive and another 120 drive, now I want more space. Is it better to fill the 2 remaining ata-33 slots or to look for an external firewire HD or enclosure and IDE drive. Internal is cheaper but how do the speeds compare? Any advice from people that have made this decision is much appreciated in advance.

k_munic · Oct 17, 2003, 02:33 AM

Originally posted by SSharon:
I have a similar question but about internal HD's. I have a dual MDD with the stock 80 hard drive and another 120 drive, now I want more space. Is it better to fill the 2 remaining ata-33 slots or to look for an external firewire HD or enclosure and IDE drive. Internal is cheaper but how do the speeds compare? Any advice from people that have made this decision is much appreciated in advance.

hmmm....

on one ide you can connect two drives... did i understand you correct, you plan to stick 4 drives in your system? therefore you would need two ide controllers... the physical existence of two remaining slots doesn't mean you can connect them....

ide is faster and more reliable then fw. but i had never any trouble with my fw connected drives (working with video demands speed and reliablity...)

i have to use fw, because a cube isn't expandable...

you have to check, what kind of ide is inside your mac - the "old" ones can just adress a max of 120Gb! the newer ones do more.. if so, maybe this is a plan:
buy two BIG drives (250Gb) and install them inside! with carbon copy cloner (look at versiontracker) it is very easy to "clone" your old 80Gb onto the new drive...- from 200 internal to 500Gb - not bad? if you need more, buy some fw...

SSharon · Oct 17, 2003, 01:02 PM

k_munic thanks for the reply. I'm pretty sure my G4 (the dual 1ghz mirror drive door) can take larger than 120gb drives and I need to check but there must be two IDE controllers b/c I know one is slower than the other. So right now I have my two drives on one controller (the easy one to get to) and was just curious about the second set of bays. Good to know that its at least as fast as firewire.

I wish I had a cube what a sweet machine, people in my school already think I worship my mac too much (they are all wrong of course).

And while I'm typing here, does anyone have suggestions about a USB 2 (if my mac supports that) PCI card. I have almost 10 devices plugged into my USB ports with a powered hub but I still get power warnings.

Thanks again.

k_munic · Oct 18, 2003, 03:45 AM

Originally posted by SSharon:
k_munic thanks for the reply. I'm pretty sure my G4 (the dual 1ghz mirror drive door) can take larger than 120gb drives and I need to check but there must be two IDE controllers b/c I know one is slower than the other. So right now I have my two drives on one controller (the easy one to get to) and was just curious about the second set of bays. Good to know that its at least as fast as firewire.

I wish I had a cube what a sweet machine, people in my school already think I worship my mac too much (they are all wrong of course).

And while I'm typing here, does anyone have suggestions about a USB 2 (if my mac supports that) PCI card. I have almost 10 devices plugged into my USB ports with a powered hub but I still get power warnings.

Thanks again.

it's not state of the art, i prefer to call it "russian engineering" but: plug another powered usb hub to your first hub! solves many problems

SSharon · Oct 20, 2003, 09:32 AM

thanks again for the reply, I did think about doing that at one time, but then I remembered that there is a bandwith limit to USB and I want to get a feel for how much that really is. So far I am using wireless KB and Mouse, Zip drive, flash drives, tv tuner, printer, digital camera, stuff like that . . . how much more can I add (I really need a scanner but want a firewire one over usb anyway) before it says no more.

CIA · Oct 21, 2003, 03:08 PM

There is one separate controller for each USB port on your mac, so you should have the full 11Mbit speed over each port. I would try and split the low speed and high speed devices between the two. Check out xlr8yourmac.com for info on USB 2.0 cards....